Slack notifications (deprecated)

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• Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
• Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated

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[!warning] This feature was deprecated in GitLab 15.9 and is planned for removal in 19.0. Use the GitLab for Slack app instead. This change is a breaking change.

The Slack notifications integration enables your GitLab project to send events (such as issue creation) to your existing Slack team as notifications. Setting up Slack notifications requires configuration changes for both Slack and GitLab.

You can also use Slack slash commands to control GitLab from Slack. Slash commands are configured separately.

Configure Slack

1. Sign in to your Slack team and start a new Incoming WebHooks configuration.
2. Identify the Slack channel where notifications should be sent to by default. Select Add Incoming WebHooks integration to add the configuration.
3. Copy the Webhook URL to use later when you configure GitLab.

Configure GitLab

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• Changed in GitLab 15.9 to limit Slack channels to 10 per event.

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1. In the top bar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > Integrations.
3. Select Slack notifications.
4. Under Enable integration, select the Active checkbox.
5. In the Trigger section, select the checkboxes for each type of GitLab event to send to Slack as a notification. For a full list, see triggers for Slack notifications. By default, messages are sent to the channel you configured during Slack configuration.
6. Optional. To send messages to a different channel, multiple channels, or as a direct message:
   • To send messages to channels, enter the Slack channel names, separated by commas.
   • To send direct messages, use the Member ID found in the user's Slack profile.
7. In Webhook, enter the webhook URL you copied in the Slack configuration step.
8. Optional. In Username, enter the username of the Slack bot that sends the notifications.
9. Select the Notify only broken pipelines checkbox to notify only on failures.
10. Select the Notify only when status changes checkbox to send notifications only when the pipeline status for the ref changes.
11. In the Branches for which notifications are to be sent dropdown list, select which types of branches to send notifications for.
12. Leave the Labels to be notified field blank to get all notifications, or add labels that the issue or merge request must have to trigger a notification.
13. Optional. Select Test settings.
14. Select Save changes.

Your Slack team now starts receiving GitLab event notifications as configured.

Triggers for Slack notifications

The following triggers are available for Slack notifications:

Trigger notifications for group mentions

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• Introduced in GitLab 16.4.
• Restrictions on notification triggers introduced in GitLab 18.3 with a feature flag named group_mention_access_check. Disabled by default.

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To trigger a notification event for a group mention, use @<group_name> in:

• Issue and merge request descriptions
• Comments on issues, merge requests, and commits

Notifications are triggered only if all direct group members have permission to view the resource (for example, merge request) where the mention is made. A notification will only be sent to at most 3 groups per event.

Troubleshooting

If your Slack integration is not working, start troubleshooting by searching through the Sidekiq logs for errors relating to your Slack service.

Error: Something went wrong on our end

You might get this generic error message in the GitLab UI. Review the logs to find the error message and keep troubleshooting from there.

Error: certificate verify failed

You might see an entry like the following in your Sidekiq log:

2019-01-10_13:22:08.42572 2019-01-10T13:22:08.425Z 6877 TID-abcdefg Integrations::ExecuteWorker JID-3bade5fb3dd47a85db6d78c5 ERROR: {:class=>"Integrations::ExecuteWorker :integration_class=>"SlackService", :message=>"SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=error: certificate verify failed"}

This issue occurs when there is a problem with GitLab communicating with Slack, or GitLab communicating with itself. The former is less likely, as Slack security certificates should always be trusted.

To view which of these problems is the cause of the issue:

1. Start a Rails console:

   shellCopy

   sudo gitlab-rails console -e production
   
   # for source installs:
   bundle exec rails console -e production
   

2. Run the following commands:

   rubyCopy

   # replace <SLACK URL> with your actual Slack URL
   result = Net::HTTP.get(URI('https://<SLACK URL>'));0
   
   # replace <GITLAB URL> with your actual GitLab URL
   result = Net::HTTP.get(URI('https://<GITLAB URL>'));0
   

If GitLab does not trust HTTPS connections to itself, add your certificate to the GitLab trusted certificates.

If GitLab does not trust connections to Slack, the GitLab OpenSSL trust store is incorrect. Typical causes are:

• Overriding the trust store with gitlab_rails['env'] = {"SSL_CERT_FILE" => "/path/to/file.pem"}.
• Accidentally modifying the default CA bundle /opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/cacert.pem.

Bulk update to disable the Slack Notification integration

To disable notifications for all projects that have Slack integration enabled, start a rails console session and use a script similar to the following:

[!warning] Commands that change data can cause damage if not run correctly or under the right conditions. Always run commands in a test environment first and have a backup instance ready to restore.

# Grab all projects that have the Slack notifications enabled
p = Project.find_by_sql("SELECT p.id FROM projects p LEFT JOIN integrations s ON p.id = s.project_id WHERE s.type_new = 'Integrations::Slack' AND s.active = true")

# Disable the integration on each of the projects that were found.
p.each do |project|
  project.slack_integration.update!(:active, false)
end